The Flexy Craze

[Uncial]

I've seen old period dramas where they've shaken a can of powder over a letter or document rather than a rocker blotter. Is it talc or something else?

[Cryptos]

Used to be sand as I recall.

[Goudy]

Or sometimes powdered cuttlefish bone.

 

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pounce_%28calligraphy%29

[AAAndrew]

Called pounce, as Goudy points out. Since in the stationery catalogues of the time I never see it, I suspect it wasn't needed very much to prepare rough paper since by that time since paper was of a higher quality.

 

To dry you'd use a blotter. Blotter paper was sold by the ream. Pounce, I haven't seen.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Andrew, I hadn't caught that there was a pdf of the interior Esterbrook booklet to open. It is of great advantage to able to read.

Great I can slip in an exact price at least once, somewhere. It's too bad we went off gold money. I do not find the 2-3% "good inflation" to be good at all. 30% inflation a decade is only for the rich an advantage. Prices stayed stable for outside of decreasing due to increased production, until FDR took us off the Gold Standard....and Nixon off the Silver Standard. Once in the 50-60-70's the DOW Jones bounced between 700-900, and is now 13,000 that is the inflation rate. Once a stock paid for it's self in with a P&E of 12-14 or 16 years, now it's only sixty years for a good earner like Coke, at now $60 with a whole dollar of dividend a year. P&E is not used any more. Buy this stock so your grandkid or great grand kid can rake in the gravy.

 

The information I was working off; extrapolating off led me to many right guesses, but to see that info in such rich detail right before my nose was so great.

Stanford ink would have been considered better than Carters, in it was imported or made by an English firm.

 

Quality was French and English tied for first. Then cheaper Imported which meant German second, (often as good as the French and English, but their workers were paid even less than the English or French ones. All better than what the Americans were making. One could 'see' the difference between Imported, much less English or French cloth over Domestic. The best straight razors even now are French, best shaving brushes English.

 

I was not going to pay that fortune for a new Gillette 65 blade razor blade. I priced straight razors, in being retired had the time to use one properly. For only 500 Euros, then when the dollar was much lower $750 I could get started. A great razor....not a singing one or one as 'engraved; as I wished, or even a very good German one for 2/3sd the price of the best razor in the world.

 

With an English shaving cup, English brush, English soaps. Pure badger shaving brush is too low a quality to waste money on. Best Badger would be more than adequate, but I set my mind on what is now called Super badger. Either of the last two are stiff enough to raise the beard in a normal bathroom.

 

Silvertip badger is too fine, one needs a barber shop, with hot towels for it to be as good as it can be. It's a little too soft for normal bathroom use. Of course I wanted the best strop, linen on one side and of Horsehide, the very best. Well they no longer offer horsehide or second best seal or porpoise hide strops....sigh, nothing but third quality strops around today.

In I was addicted to fountain pens, I ended up growing a beard.

The next time I get to Paris, I will use the barbershop at the George and get a proper old fashioned hot towel Silvertip brush shave.A man deserves the best shave in the world, once in his life. Be worth getting my beard shaved off for that.

 

Cross made Stylograph pens** in 1880. When I was a kid in the '50-60's Cross had long stopped making fountain pens and made only ball points; a 'very expensive' $8-10 matt black and gold thin pen that was the mark of class at least until the silver P-75 BP came in.

I had gone to the BX to buy a classy, much more expensive than the $2-3.00 Jotter, Cross ball point pen. I was going to Put on the Dog.

I wandered around the pen booth, and decided to get that gorgeous black and gold Snorkel I'd promised my self when I was a kid, with out a job (It would take 40 more years until I got a Snorkel). The Snorkel was still some $15. Then I got mugged by the sterling silver P-75 brothers. ($22 and $18.00) I was going to take them off to Collage.... My mother wisely put a nix to that, so I still have them. They had pen collectors back then too , so it was a very good idea to have your name engraved in it; any fountain pen.

 

**In my first western, finished and waiting for the other one, the hero has a broken stylograph pen, so has to use his stagecoach proof traveling inkwell and vest pocket telescopic holder for his pen. He's a Commercial Traveler in Patent Medicines...Traveling Salesman...the one of myth, in my heroine falls in love with that rascal. ...that stylograph pen I will change from what ever name I had if I had, to Cross. That rings across the century better than a name none would know.....in some cases, I just don't want to use the 'common' still around stuff.

 

He gave my heroine a little trinket each time he was in town every couple of months or so; and when my heroine desperately needs the money finds out the trinkets are gold plated.

Later in the second book, he offers to make an honest woman of her. She is not the little Peon girl of a year before, but a 'Lady' with higher expectations. But he's not rich enough for her and he wants to put her in a brass cage....not even any gilding. She had just murdered the first of three she kills to save him. Not that she told him about it; that would put a damper on the good time she plans. He is not her intellectual equal, and at 40 is a bit old of the tooth, and as a small town marshal, of limited future. Not even able to afford bare basics of a maid and a cook!

 

What I found funny was 25 years ago when I was working for the American Government in Germany, we still had those alphabet and monthly brown cardboard accordion files, that was so up to the minute in 1880. As I said, 1880 was more up to date than I expected it to be.

 

Powdered cuttlefish was used to absorb excess ink, in 'sand' shakers. Sand could have been used to keep the sheets apart, but wouldn't absorb ink. I have a few pre 1860's ink well sets, with an inkwell and a shaker. I've not noticed shakers in '70's and later inkwell sets. I've not seen any 'Pounce' either.

Edited April 15, 2016 by Bo Bo Olson